It was in "A forest of France," as the programme had it. The road ran
down a great aisle with the tall elm trees reaching to the sky, and
stretching their long green fingers far above, like the slender pillars
of a Gothic cathedral. Down the narrow road below sagged a big
motor-bus, painted grey, like a battleship; and, after it, a huge grey
motor-lorry; and, in front and behind them, an odd procession of
motor-cars of all sizes, bouncing awkwardly from one hollow in the road
to another.

Out of the dark interior of the motor-bus, as we passed it, there groped
a head with a grey slouch hat. It came slowly round on its long, brown,
wrinkled neck until it looked into our car. "Hey, mate," it said, "is
this the track to the races?" Then it smiled at the landscape in general
and withdrew into the interior like a snail into its shell. In this bus
was an Australian Brass Band.

We drew up where there was a collection of motor-cars, lorries, and odd
riding horses along the roadside, exactly as you might see at the picnic
races. We struck inland up one of those glades which the French
foresters leave at intervals running from side to side of their
well-managed forests. The green moss sank like a soft carpet beneath our
feet. The little watergutters bubbled beneath the twigs as we trod
across them. The cowslips and anemones nodded as our boots brushed them.
Hundreds of birds sang in the branches, and the sunlight came down in
shafts from the lacework patches of sky far above, and lit up patches of
grass, and fallen leaves, and moss-covered tree trunks, on which sat a
crowd chiefly of Australians and New Zealanders. As one of the English
correspondents said, "It was just such a forest as Shakespeare wrote
about." Who would have thought that scene believable two years before?